Imperialism And Resistance

Eva Golinger discusses soft attempts at destabilization of the Bolivarian Revolution, and the involvement of US government supported organizations.

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Following are the 60 groups that the Islamic Republic recently identified as those involved in the US’s soft/psyop/counter-revolution operations.

This is an invaluable list, and a quick web search can turn up significant important background material on these groups. For those interested in doing further research, the web site: http://www.sourcewatch.org/ is also an excellent resource, you can learn a lot by looking at the board of directors/advisors, and checking their affiliations.

Eva Golinger has done an immense amount of superb research on some of these groups, and their activities in Venezuela against the Bolivarian Revolution. Check her book: The Chavez Code: Cracking US Intervention In Venezuela.

I do have some questions about some of the groups listed, they seem to be a bit too large, and it might have been better if more specific departments had been identified, eg: the entire Yale University — (Maybe they included that particular university ’cause that’s where Bush supposedly “studied” something.) I would think that Harvard U would’ve been a better candidate for this list.

It also seems to me that Iran might not need to disallow any contact with these groups. I think another, perhaps more effective, strategy would be to expose the organizations, and use the media to talk about how they work to subvert countries who have an independent (of the USA) policy. Then expose those who are working for them, and their agendas.

via:

http://www.isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1467725&Lang=P

I’ll be updating this entry over the next few days with additional information on these organizations – Eva Golinger’s recent article mentions three of these groups also active in Venezuela (marked with an * in the list).

But now, four other entities share USAID’s multimillion dollar pie in Caracas: International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), Freedom House, and the PanAmerican Development Foundation (PADF). Of the 64 groups funded from 2002-2004 with approximately $5 million annually, today the OTI funds more than 533 organizations, political parties, programs and projects, mainly in opposition sectors, with an annual budget surpassing $7 million. Its presence has not only remained, but has grown. Obviously this is due to one very simple reason: the original objetive has still not been obtained; the overthrow or removal of President Hugo Chávez.

1 – Soros Foundation, or The Open Society Institute

2 – Woodrow Wilson Center

(Following from an article written in 2007 – currently the Woodrow Wilson Center’s board is filled with Obama appointees, including the current US (War) Secretary of State: Hillary Clinton)

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (sounds nice don’t it?). This “center for scholars” is, infact, a US government outfit – its trustees are all appointed by the President of the US (i.e. Bush). Infact, both the Chairman and Vice-Chairman raised major funds (over $100,000 for Bush and Co.’s electoral campaigns) . The other trustees either belong to major corporations, or, are affiliated with the US government, including the US Secretary of State: Condoleezza Rice. The president and director of this center is Lee H. Hamilton who is on Bush’s Homeland Security Advisory Council.

3 – Freedom House *

.. (a) high percentage of its funding comes from the US State Department — an average of 95% between 2000 and 2003 — its list of trustees, is a Who’s Who of neoconservatives from government, business, academia, labor, and the press.

4 – National Endowment for Democracy NED

NED received funds from the U.S. government and distributes funds to four other organizations – one created by the Republican Party, another by the Democratic Party, one created by the business community and one by the “labor” movement (N.B.: the names of these organizations have changed over time):
International Republican Institute (IRI)

National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI)
Chamber of Commerce’s Center for Private Enterprise (CIPE)
AFL-CIO’s American Center for International Labor Solidarity

The close alignment of the NEDs activities with US foreign policy interests comes as no surprise, especially when you consider the revolving doorways between the US Government and the NED Board of Directors, some of the most notable of which include:
“…former US Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger (Nixon) and Madeleine Albright (Clinton), former US Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci (Reagan), former National Security Council Chair Zbigniew Brzezinski (Carter), former NATO Supreme Allied Command in Europe, General Wesley K. Clark (Clinton), and the current head of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz (George W. Bush). Another notable, Bill Brock, served as a US Senator, a US Trade Representative, and US Secretary of Labor, and then Chairman of the Board of NED.” [5]

What the NED does in foreign countries, through its recipient organizations the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), would be rightly illegal in the United States. The NED injects “soft money” into the domestic elections of foreign countries in favor of one party or the other. Imagine what a couple of hundred thousand dollars will do to assist a politician or political party in a relatively poor country abroad. It is particularly Orwellian to call US manipulation of foreign elections “promoting democracy.” How would Americans feel if the Chinese arrived with millions of dollars to support certain candidates deemed friendly to China? Would this be viewed as a democratic development?

5 – National Democratic Institute NDI

This is one of the four groups that receives its funding from the US government funded NED (see above). The NDI is the Democratic Party’s imperial “democracy promotion” group (i.e. the liberal imperialists) its board of directors is chaired by the notorious Madeline Albright.

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.

- The National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), organizations that receive funding from the U.S. State Department, are planning on sending delegations to observe the November 29 elections in Honduras, according to a statement issued by Republican Senator Richard Lugar. The IRI is a group that has supported the ouster of democratically elected presidents in Haiti and Venezuela in recent years. Both groups are apparently planning to assist with observation of the elections, despite the fact that the electoral process will be effectively controlled by thousands of military troops and police officers – the same forces who have committed innumerable human rights violations, including killings, rapes, beatings and thousands of detentions, since the June 28 coup d’etat.

6 – National Republican Institute NRI (Also active in Venezuela against President Chavez)

7 – Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe (headquarters in Warsaw) IDEE

8 – Center democratic Eastern Europe (headquarters in Warsaw) EEDC

9 – Ford Foundation

10 – Surveying Rockefeller Foundation

11 – Hoover Institution Stanford University

12 – Dutch Institute Hyvvs

13 – Mnaz England

14 – United Nations Association USA

15 – Carnegie Foundation

16 – Vyltvn Park, England

17 – organization Search for Common areas

18 – Population Council

19 – Washington Institute for Middle East issues near

20 – Aspen Institute

21 – American Institute Ayntrprayz

22 – New America Foundation

23 – Smith Richardson Foundation

24 – Germain Marshall Fund U.S. (with offices in Germany, Belgium and …)

25 – International Center for peaceful solution

26 – Memorial Foundation

27 – Yale University

28 – Center Mrdyn

29 – Foundation for Democracy in Iran

30 – International Republican Institute *

31 – National Democratic Institute *

32 – Institute of American initiative

33 – Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe

34 – Center Kmkrsany U.S.

35 – International Center for Private Business

36 – Center for American workers, international solidarity

37 – International Center for Democracy transfer

38 – Community organization Democracy

39 – Albert Einstein Institute

The Albert Einstein Institution: Non-Violence According to the CIA

The Albert Einstein Institute and Venezuela

40 – World Movement for Democracy

41 – network of young democracy activists

42 – Department of Information and communication technologies democracy

43 – International parliamentary movement for democracy

44 – Institute of Democracy Network Search

45 – Institute of Riga

46 – Institute Brkmn

47 – Council on Foreign Relations United States

48 – Association of German foreign policy

49 – Institute Israelite Mmry

50 – Center for Democracy Studies, UK

51 – Meridian Institute

52 – Yale University, and all affiliated centers and institutes

53 – National Defense University

54 – Iran Human Rights Documentation Center Documentation

55 – Center for American Flta active in Central Asia and Caucasus

56 – Risk Committee

57 – Brookings Institute

58 – Saban Center affiliated to the Brookings

59 – Human Rights Watch

60 – New America Foundation

Via Eva Golinger’s blog

Opposition forces in Honduras, led by a US-funded NGO Grupo Paz y Democracia, have stated via CNN that a coup has not ocurred, but rather a “transition” to democracy. Martha Diaz, coordinator of the NGO, which receives USAID funding, has just declared minutes ago on CNN that “civil society” does not support President Zelaya nor his “illegal quest” to hold a non-binding referendum on a potential future constitutional reform. She justified his kidnapping, beating and removal from power as a “democratic transition”. Again, this is eerily reminiscent of the coup d’etat in Venezuela in April 2002, when so-called “civil society” along with dissident military forces kidnapped President Chávez and installed a “transition government”. The goups involved also received funding from the U.S. government, primarily via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and later from USAID as well.

The Venezuelan news report (video below – espanol) points out not only the victory of President Ahmadinejad, but also correctly discusses the class character of the vote, and the subsequent riots. The report also talks about the the psyop “color revolution” that is being promoted by the US regime affiliated “think tanks” under the guise of “democracy promotion” etc. See also Eva Golinger’s artice La “Revolución” Verde: El Guión se ha activado de nuevo: está vez en Irán.

“We call on the world to respect Iran because there are attempts to undermine the strength of the Iranian revolution,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said in his weekly radio and television address on Sunday.

“President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s triumph was a triumph all the way. They are trying to stain Ahmadinejad’s triumph and through that weaken the government and the Islamic revolution. I know they will not succeed,” Chavez said.

It should also be noted that President Ahmadinejad was strongly criticized by his opponents for building strong ties with the Latin – American pinkish red governments because, according to them, these countries were “far away.” This kind of thinking, of-course, was music to the ears of the imperialists, who have been irritated with Iran’s strong relationship over the past four years with Venezuela, and expanding relations with other countries in the region. Over the next few years, it would be important for the Ahmadinejad administration to not only continue building stronger ties, but to also begin student exchange programs, where younger Iranian Islamic revolutionaries can meet Bolivarian revolutionaries in Venezuela, and vice versa. This would be a far more productive form of people-people social/cultural exchange, than one involving US/Europe, and would aid in strengthening south-south solidarity.